Jean-Baptiste Cap was a wealthy free Black man condemned in absentia after the Ogé affair who continued operating underground throughout much of 1791, linking the free-colored rights struggle to the enslaved insurgent conspiracy.
He was implicated in a February 1791 plan to free Ogé by joining town free people of color with enslaved rebels — aborted by floods or betrayal. On September 1, 1791, he allegedly tried to incite the enslaved workers of Le Cap and was denounced, arrested, tortured, broken on the wheel, and paraded through the city in agony. His career proves that the boundaries between free-colored politics and enslaved conspiracy were more porous than the colonial archive admitted: he was not a marginal figure but a socially substantial free Black man whose father-in-law Desrouleaux was praised in French literary culture, operating at the intersection of the Ogé underground and the August insurgent world.
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TimelineAcross the historical record.
- 1791-08-22
August 1791 Uprising
Was still linked to insurgent organizing as late as September 1, 1791, trying to incite Le Cap's enslaved workers — demonstrating underground continuity from the Ogé world to the August uprising.